An excerpt from the book GENOCIDE - CRITICAL ISSUES
OF THE HOLOCAUST Edited by Alex Grobman
and Daniel Landes

Russell Books, 1983  Soft cover

From pages 389 - 393

World War II Nazis in the United
States

MARTIN MENDELSOHN

For millions of displaced persons
(DPs) in Europe, the prison conditions of Nazi concentration
camps were exchanged for the more benign but, nonetheless, still
primitive and harsh surroundings of the displaced persons camps.
The whole continent of Europe had many urgent problems. The ravages
of war had left it desolate and barely able to house, feed, clothe,
and provide sanitary services for its populations. Without outside
help, economic and social services were at a standstill.
In 1949-1950, the United States
began relaxing its rigid immigration quotas to allow the victims
of World War II to enter this country. By 1952, approximately
400,000 Europeans had entered America. But in the wake of the
tidal wave of refugees seeking comfort and security, many former
Nazis also were able to come to the United States, sometimes
under the guise of anti-Soviet or anti-Communist refugees. Those
who fought the United States now came to reap the benefits of
its victoryand their defeat.
The came because the United States
either did not know or did not care who they were or what they
did. This combination of ignorance and apathy planted and nurtured
the seeds of the problem with Nazi war criminals residing in
the United States. Today, hundreds of individuals are under investigation,
suspected of concealing their Nazi past. In the confusion of
postwar Europe, visas were granted to thousands. A thorough investigation
was a rarity, even if the records had survived, or if the investigators
knew what to look for. Many displaced personsboth Jews
and non-Jewshad no papers and no way to verify their identities.
A significant number came from villages where the town hall's
records were lost under German occupation or Allied bombardments.
Lack of records meant that many could assume new bogus identities.
With these new unverifiable identities, Nazis sometimes applied
for visas to enter the United States as victims of aggressionand
such visas were granted.
Many Nazis came to the United States
in 1948 and 1949, claiming that they spent the war years in central
eastern Europe in such nonmilitary and nonpolitical positions
as foresters and dairymen. In 1950, the Displaced Persons Act
was changed to specifically exclude Communists. However, in the
course of amending the act, the language prohibiting the entrance
of Nazis and Fascists into the United States was dropped, either
accidentally or deliberately. Between 1950 and 1978 even an avowed
Nazi (including, one must assume, Hitler if he were alive) could
have legally entered the United States as an immigrant and become
a citizen.
In 1950, the Korean War started
and anti-Communist hysteria was commonplace. Untied States intelligence
agencies intensified existing programs to bring politically active,
known anti-Communists into the country to gain firsthand knowledge
of the conditions, terrain, and people living in the Soviet Bloc.
Many of these politically active, known anti-Communists were
actually Nazis, Nazi sympathizers, or Nazi collaborators. Even
in some cases where security and background investigations were
made, known Nazis were allowed to enter this country. The rationale
was that these Nazis were anti-Communists or had useful scientific
skills.
As far back as 1944, the Joint
Intelligence Activities Board began planning the "Paperclip
Program," which admitted hundreds of Nazi scientists and
administrators into the United States to assist American space
and military developmentespecially rockets, missiles, jet
engines, and airplanes. Nazis who had useful scientific skills
were acceptable if they were deemed of use in fighting the Communists.
The expediency of this shortsighted crusading logic was obvious
to intelligent observers and critics at the time.
The Communists retaliated by releasing
politically embarrassing information showing the Nazi backgrounds
of these new Americans. The United States, with justification,
dismissed most of these charges as Communist propaganda designed
to discredit those who had historically opposed the imposition
of Communist domination on their homeland. No one, to this day,
knows how many Nazis the Communists used (and may still be using)
in their military research programs.
Very few prosecutions of Nazi collaborators
took place in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. These
prosecutions were either of notorious Nazis, such as the Rumanian
Nicolae Malaxa and the Croat Andrija Artukovic, or they were
Jewish kapos, such as Jonas Lewy. For different reasons
these failed.
Nicolae Malaxa, for example, was
a major industrialist in steel and heavy industry in prewar Rumania.
Soon after the Nazi invasion, Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering
nationalized and took control of all means of Rumanian industrial
production. Originally Malaxa lost all his holdings. In a short
period, however, he resumed control under Nazi protection and
produced machinery for the German occupiers. Malaxa was also
a strong financial backer of the collaborationist and native
Fascist Iron Guard and the government of General Ion Antonescu.
When the war was over, Malaxa transferred millions of dollars
into New York banks. Even after the Communists took control in
Rumania, Malaxa continued to have enormous influence. He arrived
in the United States as part of a trade delegation and defected.
When his past activities were discovered, the United States government
moved to deport him. Through complex and intricate political
and legal maneuvers, he was able to stymie deportation until
his death in 1963, at which time he was residing on Park Avenue
in New York City.
Andrija Artukovic, minister of
the interior of Croatia, entered the United States under a false
name in 1948. Since 1949, efforts have been under way to extradite
him to Yugoslavia. On the narrow question of extradition, the
case reached the United States Supreme Court. He was ordered
deported to Yugoslavia in 1958 but that order has been judicially
stayed. In 1959, the Justice Department tried to have Artukovic
deported. The stay was lifted but he has appealed that order
to the Circuit Court of Appeals. The court has not rendered a
decision and as of the summer of 1982, Artukovic remains in the
United States.
Perhaps the most tragic prosecution
during this embarrassing period was the one directed against
Jonas Lewy. Lewy was a Polish Jew who served as a kapo
in a Nazi concentration camp. He was identified after his arrival
in the United States as an overzealous guard who enjoyed his
work, maltreating and brutally beating Jewish prisoners. Although
he was found guilty and ordered deported, the United States government
stayed his deportation to Poland because of justifiable fears
that the Polish government would persecute him.
Yet, even these cases were isolated
examples of unofficial attempts to remove the Nazis from the
United States. For the most part, the American people and their
government were not interested in pursuing these cases. The war
was over and they had other priorities. The enormity of the Holocaust
could not easily be dismissed. In May, 1960, Israel arrested
Adolf Eichmann, the man responsible for implementing the Final
Solution. He was tried in April-December, 1961. This nondescript
Austrian SS officer personified Nazi evil. The Eichmann trial,
which drew world attention, culminating in his execution in May,
1962, was high drama and led to renewed attention to Nazis hiding
in our midst.
In 1974, the dam broke. Elizabeth
Holtzman, a young Jewish congressperson from Brooklyn, learned
of the problem of Nazis in America. As a member of the House
Judiciary Committee she asked the Justice Department for information
and was disturbed by its half-hearted response. Ms. Holtzman
learned that for twenty years there had been evasion and equivocation
with respect to Nazis in the United States. A policy of silence
and indifference to Nazis in America prevailed in the United
States government. Bureaucratic inertia made this policy as effective
as tacit protection of ex-Nazis. There were no centralized records,
no coordinated investigations, and individual cases were accorded
very low priorities. No agency had the authority, mandate, or
legal responsibility to investigate or arrest Nazi war criminals.
Each branch of government had its own prioritiesand none
was interested in Nazis.
In 1977, the Justice Department
responded favorably to Representative Holtzman's demands. For
the first time since the Nuernberg prosecutions a single, centralized
unit was created in the Justice Department with the mandate to
investigate and prosecute individuals accused of concealing their
Nazi past in order to obtain a visa allowing them to enter the
United States. The investigative unit was first a part of the
Immigration and Naturalization Service and was later incorporated
into the Criminal Division of the Justice Department.
Since its inception, the unit (now
called the Office of Special Investigations) has conducted research
into hundreds of cases and has litigated all of the more than
twenty cases brought against alleged Nazis. People such as Bishop
Valeirian Trifa, the student leader of the Rumanian Iron Guard,
Treblinka guard Feodor Fedorenko, and others have now been brought
to justice. But justice in the American system is frustratingly
slow due to constitutional safeguards. Despite their heinous
deeds, these men and women are not, nor can they be, accused
of violating any section of the United States criminal code,
since their crimes are not covered by American law. Moreover,
the United States has not been a signatory or ratifier of any
treaty on the subject of genocide since 1945, and only under
political pressure have prosecutions against Nazi criminals living
in the United States begun. These Nazis can only be prosecuted
for lying on their immigration forms about their Nazi pasts;
as understood in the doctrine of defective immigration, their
entry into the United States is invalidated by such substantial
untruths as membership in a Fascist party or the holding of a
criminal record. Their only punishment is denaturalization for
citizens and deportation for aliens. Sometimes, as in the Ryan
Case, in which Hermine Braunsteiner Ryan, a former guard at Maidanek
concentration camp, was extradited from the United States, prosecution
subsequently has taken place in West Germany. However, it is
not known if the United States would deport to such countries
as Poland and Soviet Bloc nations, where the political climate
is undesirable but where Nazi war criminals are prosecuted. Despite
the relative leniency of the American punishments, the effort
is still to be supported for its educational value.
Today, efforts to find and prosecute
Nazi war criminals continue. Officially, the governments of Israel,
the United States, and West Germany cooperate and share information.
There is limited cooperation between those governments and some
Communist countries, such as the Soviet Union, the German Democratic
Republic, Yugoslavia, and Poland. Other Western countries, such
as Canada and France, are now also beginning to examine their
own Nazi immigrant problem.